Synectics Solutions
Head of Platform Engineering
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Synectics
Synectics are a leading force in the provision of innovative, data-driven business solutions. For more than 30 years, we have specialised in building complex data management and software products for well-known organisations around the world. We pride ourselves on creating technology that makes a meaningful impact, supported by a collaborative and people-focused culture.
The Role
As Head of Platform Engineering, you will lead the strategy, design, and operation of the shared engineering platforms that enable Synectics’ product teams to build, release, and run software securely, reliably, and efficiently. Reporting into the CTO, this is a hands-on leadership role combining platform strategy, technical direction, operational excellence, and direct people leadership for the Platform Engineering function, including Platform Engineers, SRE, and DevSecOps capabilities.
A key part of the role will be helping Synectics move from a physical on-premise hosting model, currently replicated internationally in AWS, towards a truly cloud-native platform. AWS is the target platform for this transformation, and the role will focus on making better use of automation, elasticity, managed services, resilience patterns, and modern operating practices.
You will create the “paved road” for engineering: clear standards, reusable platform capabilities, and self-service tooling that reduce friction for teams and improve the quality, speed, and resilience of software delivery. This will include shared deployment pipelines, infrastructure templates, observability patterns, security controls, environment provisioning, developer tooling, and the evolution of an internal developer platform that supports a Platform as a Product approach.
The successful candidate will work closely with engineering, architecture, product, security, and operations teams to modernise our delivery approach, improve developer experience, and ensure our platforms scale with the needs of our customers and business. Product development and engineering teams will be the primary consumers of the platform capability, with the role focused on enabling them to build, release, and operate software more safely, quickly, and consistently. Alongside this core remit, they will build an effective partnership with the Data function so that data platforms, pipelines, analytics workloads, and AI/ML use cases can also benefit from secure, reliable, and reusable platform capabilities.
What You’ll Get From Us
- Hybrid working, with office locations based in Stoke-on-Trent (Head Office) and London.
- A supportive and inclusive culture, with continuous investment in our people and ways of working.
- A comprehensive benefits package designed to support your wellbeing, development, and work-life balance.
- The opportunity to shape a strategic platform engineering capability with direct impact on product delivery, customer outcomes, and engineering effectiveness.
- A senior leadership role with scope to influence architecture, engineering standards, delivery practices, platform strategy, and technology investment across the business.
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What You’ll Do
- Define and lead the platform engineering strategy, roadmap, and operating model, aligned to Synectics’ technology strategy and business priorities.
- Lead the evolution from an on-premise hosting architecture replicated in AWS to a more cloud-native platform model, reducing unnecessary complexity and making greater use of scalable, automated, and managed cloud capabilities.
- Build, lead, and develop the Platform Engineering team, including Platform Engineers, SRE, and DevSecOps capabilities, creating clarity of purpose, accountability, effective ways of working, and continuous improvement.
- Own the design and evolution of shared engineering platforms, including cloud foundations, CI/CD, continuous delivery/deployment, infrastructure automation, observability, environments, developer tooling, and self-service provisioning.
- Help engineering teams move progressively towards continuous deployment, increasing deployment frequency so that safe, production-ready changes can be released more closely in line with code check-in.
- Improve developer experience by providing reusable patterns, templates, standards, and “golden paths,” helping teams adopt the platform effectively and enabling a more consistent Platform as a Product model.
- Enable the safe and effective use of AI within platform engineering and across product development teams, including AI-assisted engineering workflows, automation, operational insight, developer productivity tooling, and emerging agentic engineering practices.
- Champion engineering excellence across automation, reliability, security, resilience, scalability, performance, and cost efficiency.
- Embed modern DevSecOps and SRE practices, including service health measures, incident learning, operational readiness, monitoring, and continuous improvement.
- Partner with security and architecture teams to ensure platforms are secure by design, compliant with required standards, and aligned to long-term architectural direction, including the use of policy as code where appropriate.
- Ensure platform capabilities support customers operating in highly regulated industries, maintaining certified environments and controls, including ITHC and Cyber Essentials Plus (CE+) requirements where applicable.
- Work in close partnership with the Data function to turn repeatable data platform needs into reusable services, including ingestion patterns, environment provisioning, secure access, observability, deployment automation, and operational support models.
- Lead cloud and infrastructure cost management, embedding practical FinOps disciplines so platforms are designed, operated, and continuously optimised for efficiency, scalability, transparency, and value for money.
- Own and use DORA metrics such as deployment frequency, lead time for changes, change failure rate, and recovery time, alongside other meaningful measures of reliability, platform adoption, developer experience, cost efficiency, and engineering best practice, to guide priorities, drive improvement, and demonstrate impact.
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Essential Experience
- Proven experience directly leading and developing platform engineering, cloud engineering, DevOps, SRE, DevSecOps, or infrastructure teams in a complex software product environment.
- Strong technical breadth across cloud-native platform engineering, including internal developer platforms, infrastructure as code, CI/CD, continuous delivery/deployment, observability, containerisation, automation, and modern software delivery practices.
- Practical experience with relevant platform engineering tooling and patterns such as Terraform, Kubernetes/EKS, GitOps, policy as code, self-service provisioning, and secure-by-default platform capabilities.
- A strong understanding of secure software delivery, operational resilience, incident management, release automation, and production support models.
- A product mindset toward internal platforms, treating engineering teams as customers and prioritising based on value, adoption, feedback, usability, and measurable engineering outcomes.
- Practical experience with cloud or infrastructure cost management and FinOps practices, including usage visibility, optimisation, forecasting, governance, and balancing performance, resilience, and cost.
- A collaborative, pragmatic leadership style with the ability to balance hands-on technical involvement with strategic direction and team development.
Desirable Experience
- AWS experience would be advantageous, as Synectics’ target platform has already been set as AWS; however, deep experience in equivalent cloud-native platform transformation is also highly relevant.
- Experience modernising legacy or on-premise hosting environments into cloud-native platforms, including the practical trade-offs involved in re-architecting, migration, resilience, performance, security, and cost efficiency.
- Experience defining platform strategy, setting technical standards, and delivering shared capabilities used by multiple engineering teams.
- Prior experience working with customers in highly regulated industries and operating within certified environments, including ITHC and Cyber Essentials Plus (CE+), is highly desirable.
- Excellent stakeholder management skills, with the ability to translate technical priorities into business outcomes and build confidence with senior leaders.
- Experience partnering with data, analytics, or AI/ML teams to provide platform capabilities that support data products, pipelines, governance, and production workloads.
- Experience enabling or adopting AI-assisted and agentic engineering practices within platform engineering or software delivery environments, with an understanding of how to introduce these capabilities safely, pragmatically, and with measurable impact.
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